There are many variations on his name, including Ziad
Samir Al-Jarrah, Zaid Jarrahi,
Ziad Jarrah Jarrat, and Ziyad Samir
Jarrah. After a wealthy and secular upbringing, Jarrah became involved
in the planning for the September 11 attacks in vocational
university. Unique among the hijackers, he had a Turkish
girlfriend (born in Germany, living and studying in Bochum, Germany) and was close to
his family. There have been some questions as to whether or not
Jarrah was actually on Flight 93 and whether he was a hijacker; the
9/11
Commission concluded that his was not a case of mistaken
identity and that he piloted the plane. In October 2006, an al-Qaeda video was released
showing Jarrah and Mohammed Atta recording their wills in January
2000 in Osama Bin Laden’s Tarnak Farms base near Kandahar.[1]

Contents

History

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Early
life

Jarrah was born in Mazraa,
Lebanon, to a wealthy
family. His parents were nominally MuslimSunnis, although they lived a secular lifestyle. When
he was seven years old, Israel invaded southern Lebanon, a
fact he referred to later in life. His parents sent him to a Catholic school
in Beirut, La Sagesse, where
he volunteered at a camp for disabled children and helped run an
anti-drug program. Later on, he served a nearby church helping
orphaned children there. His academic success to this point was
mediocre, and his parents arranged for private tutors in mathematics, physics and chemistry.

He remained close to his family; he was apparently the only 9/11
hijacker to have close family ties, including with his uncle Assem Omar
Jarrah, whose work permit would later be found in the wreckage
with Ziad’s passport. In his childhood, he had always wanted to fly
planes, but his family discouraged this. “I stopped him from being
a pilot,” his father told the Wall Street Journal a week
after the attacks. “I only have one son and I was afraid that he
would crash.”[2]

From 1995 to 1996, while Ziad Jarrah was living in Lebanon,
according to his family, somebody of the same name rented an
apartment in Brooklyn, New York. The
landlords claimed it was the same Ziad Jarrah as in the FBI
photographs.[3]

In the spring of 1996, Jarrah moved to Germany with his cousin Salim. They were there
to take a certificate course in German at the
University of Greifswald
required of foreigners studying in Germany who do not speak the
language. While sharing an apartment with his cousin, he reportedly
attended discos and beach
parties, and his attendance at the mosque fell off. He met Aysel Şengün, a Turkish woman studying dentistry, and the two
became good friends. They dated on and off for the remainder of his
life and lived together briefly, which vexed his more religious
friends, and celebrated an unofficial wedding on April 1, 1999.

The 9/11 Commission Report states that Jarrah was a member of
the Hamburg cell,
along with Mohamed
Atta and the others. He did not live with any of the others,
however, and can be confirmed to only have met with any of them in
Hamburg on a single occasion: that of Said Bahaji’s wedding at the al-Quds
Mosque. The closeness of his connections with the others is not
known.

In 2006, a video surfaced showing Jarrah, still bearded, reading
his will in January 2000 along with Mohamed Atta.[1]
Not long after this, Jarrah shaved his beard and began to act more
secular, according to Şengün. Many of the future hijackers
attempted to hide their radicalism and blend in with the
population. Jarrah reported his passport stolen in February 2000 and received
a duplicate, just as hijackers Atta and al-Shehhi had done the
previous month.

Jarrah dropped out of vocational university and began looking
at flight schools. He claimed that this was to fulfill his
childhood dream of being a pilot. After looking in several
countries, he decided that none of the flight schools in Europe
were sufficient; and, at the advice of a childhood friend, he
prepared to move to the United States.

In the
United States

Jarrah’s May 25, 2000 Student Visa

Jarrah apparently entered the United States on seven separate
occasions, more than any other hijacker. On May 25, 2000, he
applied for and received a five-year US B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) visa in Berlin.
On June 27, 2000, he came to the U.S. for the first time, arriving
at Newark International
Airport. He then traveled to Florida, where he enrolled full-time at the
Florida Flight Training Center in Venice. Jarrah did not apply for a
change in his status, from a tourist visa to a student visa, thus
violating his immigration status.[6]

Jarrah was enrolled in flight school for six months, from June
2000 to January 15, 2001. At the flight school, many of his
classmates remember him fondly, describing him as kind and
trustworthy, and remember him drinking beer occasionally.[7] Jarrah
was unique among the hijackers in that he did not live with any
other hijackers, but rather lived with a German student named
Thorsten Biermann. Biermann did not observe Jarrah acting
particularly religiously or overtly politically. Jarrah
occasionally flew back to Germany to visit his Turkish-German
girlfriend, and called or e-mailed her nearly every day.

Jarrah had obtained his license to fly small planes, and began
training to fly large jets late in 2000. He flew to Beirut to visit his family, and
then to Germany to visit his girlfriend, Şengün. He brought her
back to the United States for a ten-day visit, and she even
attended a flight school session with him. In mid-January 2001, he
again flew to Beirut to visit
his father, who was to have open-heart surgery. He then visited his
girlfriend, Şengün, in Germany, and came back to the United States
again. His behavior was markedly different from the other
hijackers, who broke off all familial and romantic relations.

On his way back to the U.S., he passed through the UAE,
according to that country’s officials, where he was initially
reported as having been interviewed by authorities on January 30,
2001, at the request of the CIA.[8]
He allegedly admitted to having been to Afghanistan and Pakistan,[8][9]
although the CIA has since denied the claim and the 9/11 Commission
report does not mention it. The Florida flight school where Jarrah
had been studying also said he was in school there until January
15, 2001.[10]

On May 6, Jarrah registered for a two-month membership at the
US1 Fitness Center, a gym in Dania Beach, Florida—he would
later renew his membership for two more months, and eventually had
lessons in close-quarters combat with Bert Rodriguez.[11][12]
It is believed that sometime in that month Ahmed
al-Haznawi, who arrived on June 8, moved in with Jarrah. Jarrah
rented a new apartment in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea
after both men gave the landlord photocopies of their German
passports, which he later turned over to the FBI.[13]

On June 25, Jarrah took al-Haznawi to Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on
the advice of his landlord, Charles Lisa. Al-Haznawi was treated by
Dr. Christos Tsonas, who gave him antibiotics for a small gash on
his left calf. While he told staff that he had bumped into a
suitcase,[14] the
media briefly reported it as a sign of cutaneous anthrax, hoping to show a link to the
2001
anthrax attacks, although the FBI later addressed the rumors,
stating "Exhaustive testing did not support that anthrax was
present anywhere the hijackers had been."[15]

In mid July 2001, some of the hijackers and members of the
Hamburg cell gathered near Salou, Spain,
for a period of a few days up to a couple of weeks. In late July,
Jarrah flew to Germany and again met with his girlfriend, the last
time she saw him. He reportedly arrived back in the United States
on August 5, though other sources indicate that he took his pilot’s
test on August 2, having missed his sister’s wedding to do so.[16]
On August 27, he checked into a Laurel, Maryland, motel, only a mile
away from the Valencia where four other hijackers were staying.[17] On
September 7, 2001, all four of Flight 93 hijackers flew from Fort Lauderdale to Newark International
Airport aboard Spirit Airlines.[18]

On September 9, in the early morning, Jarrah was pulled over for
speeding in Maryland and received a US$200 ticket. Jarrah phoned his
parents, mentioning that he had received the money order they'd
sent five days earlier. He told them he intended to see them on
September 22 for his cousin's wedding, and that he had bought a new
suit for the occasion. His landlady later confirmed that Jarrah had
shown off the suit to her days earlier.

On September 10, Jarrah spent the last evening of his life
writing a letter to his girlfriend Aysel, the woman with whom he
had made marriage plans. This letter is widely interpreted as a suicide note. Because
of an error in the address, the letter was returned to the United
States where it was discovered. Some dispute exists regarding
whether the letter was a suicide note, since it referred to future
meetings and the package contained references to scuba diving
instructions.[19][20]

The note contained the phrases "I did what I was supposed to do"
and "You ought to be very proud, because it is an honor and you
will see the result(s) and everybody will be happy".

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According to one source, Jarrah had set up a large mock cockpit made of cardboard boxes
in his apartment just before the attacks.[12]

Attack

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Ziad Jarrah and 3 other
hijackers boarded United Airlines Flight 93 in
Newark Liberty
International Airport at gate A17 without incident, and sat in
a first-class seat near the cockpit. Due to the flight's delay, the
plane took off at 8:41 am, five minutes before American Airlines Flight 11
crashed into the World Trade Center. The pilot and
crew were notified of the first two hijackings that day, and were
told to be on the alert. Within minutes, around 9:10 am, Flight 93
was hijacked as well.

The 9/11
Commission stated that Jarrah was the pilot. The flight
transcript might indicate that Saeed al-Ghamdi, who also trained in
flight simulators, could have been the pilot or a co-pilot. Two of
the hijackers are heard calling the pilot "Saeed".[21]

The pilot's voice was heard by air traffic control telling
passengers to remain seated. At 9:39 a.m., the pilot announced,
"This is the captain. Would like you all to remain seated. There is
a bomb on board and are going back to the airport, and to have our
demands [unintelligible]. Please remain quiet." over the radio.[22]

At least two of the cellphone calls made by passengers indicate
that all the hijackers they saw were wearing red bandannas, and
indicated that one of the men—believed to be either Ahmad Alhaznawi
or Ahmed Alnamihad—tied a box around his torso, and claimed there
was a bomb inside. Passengers on the plane heard, through telephone
calls, the fates of the other hijacked planes. They realized they
had to take the cockpit back from the terrorists or their plane,
too, would be used as a missile. A passenger uprising foiled the
terrorists' plans, but failed to save the plane. According to the
August 8, 2003, analysis of the plane's cockpit
recording by the United States investigators, a crowd of
passengers tried to break into the cockpit. To try to knock them
off balance, the pilot rolled the plane to the left and right. When
this failed, he then pitched the nose forward and back.
Nevertheless, the passengers continued their assault on the cockpit
door. They used a service trolley as a battering ram and began to
destroy the cockpit door. Finally the pilot was told by a fellow
hijacker to crash into the Pennsylvania farmland rather than cede
control of the plane. In response, he turned the plane upside down
and began his descent. United 93 crashed, at 580 miles per hour
(933 km/h), into a reclaimed strip mine at the edge of the
woods near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at
10:03:11, 125 miles (200 km) from Washington, D.C. All aboard
died.The plane crashed 10 minutes after the south tower had
collapsed and The
Pentagon was attacked and a section destroyed.

After September 11, Jarrah's girlfriend, Şengün, filed a missing
person report in Bochum.
Jarrah became a suspect as FBI agents found a "Ziad Jarrahi" in the
flight manifest (the additional i at the end a possible
misspelling).[3]

Mistaken identity claims

There have been claims that Jarrah was not a hijacker or that he
was not present on the plane and his identity was stolen. It has
been pointed out that he had a deviating profile from the other
hijackers and that the passengers reported three and not four
hijackers. However, the October 2006 emergence of a “martyrdom”
video shot on January 18, 2000, along with Mohammad Atta has cast
heavy doubt on such claims.[1]

Shortly after the September 11 attacks, family and friends
claimed that Jarrah did not exhibit the same “smoldering political
resentments” or “cultural conservatism” as Mohammed Atta. He was
not raised with a background of religious conviction and did not
hold to an obviously conservative lifestyle. Personnel at the
flight school Jarrah attended described him as “a normal person.”
Jarrah called his family two days, and his girlfriend Aysel Sengün
three hours, before boarding United 93; Sengün described the
conversation as “pleasant” and “normal.” She also claimed that he
never mentioned any names of the other hijackers.[16]
In his call two days before the attack, Jarrah told his family he
would be coming home for a cousin’s wedding. “It makes no sense,”
his uncle Jamal claimed. “He said he had even bought a new suit for
the occasion.” Jarrah’s family in Lebanon claimed in September 2001 that he was
an innocent passenger on the plane.[3]

On October 23, 2001, John Ashcroft claimed that Jarrah had
shared a Hamburg apartment with Mohamed Atta and Marwan
al-Shehhi,[23]
though German authorities
that same day told the Los Angeles Times that they had
no evidence that any of Jarrah’s three apartments in Hamburg had
been connected with the other hijackers. One high-ranking German
police official stated, “The only information we have connecting
the three Hamburg suspects is the FBI’s assertion that there is a
connection.”[16]
In October 2006, however, a video surfaced showing Atta and Jarrah
together in Afghanistan, clearly connecting Jarrah to the members
of the Hamburg cell.[1]
Jarrah also appears in a wedding video with other hijackers at a
mosque in Hamburg.

The 9/11
Commission concluded that Jarrah was a hijacker on the plane
when it crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The commission does
not give any credence to the idea that Jarrah was not aboard the
plane, and no government or credible investigating agency has come
forward questioning that conclusion. Also, there have been no
reports of Jarrah being seen alive since the attacks.

Notes

^ Unless
otherwise sourced, statements in this article come primarily from
the 9/11 Commission Report.[24]
Although this report has received criticism from various groups, it
is widely considered the most thorough and reliable extant account
of the 9/11 attacks that is publicly available. Where there is
substantial disagreement with the report about significant facts in
Jarrah's life, this is mentioned explicitly.

^ Various
sources have speculated that the White House was the target of Flight 93;
the 9/11 Commission Report, based on information derived from the
interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
confidently asserts that it was, in fact, the Capitol Building that
was targeted.

^ This
account, in the 9/11 Commission Report, is provided solely from the
testimony of captured al-Qaeda member Ramzi Binalshibh.